PressTV-Trump ‘flirted with idea of invading Venezuela last year’

A new report says US President Donald Trump asked several of his top foreign policy advisers last year about the possibility of a “military option” against oil-rich Venezuela.

Trump’s inquiry came during an Oval Office meeting on August 10, 2017 about diplomatic sanctions that Washington was enacting on Venezuela amid political and economic crises there, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday, quoting an unnamed senior US administration official.

“With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the US just simply invade the troubled country?” Trump asked his top aides at the time.

​That stunned the aides, including then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson and former national security adviser H. R. McMaster and sparked a heated debate for about five minutes at the meeting, according to the AP report.

The unnamed official said the aides took turns trying to convince the president to drop the idea,…